Link Building: Mislead to Believe&nbsp

This YouMoz entry was submitted by one of our community members. The author’s views are entirely his or her own (excluding an unlikely case of hypnosis) and may not reflect the views of Moz.

Everyone in the field of internet marketing knows that without link building, your site will not be valued by search engines. Also, we agree that links are a path through which our prospects can reach to us. Most importantly, we need to develop high quality links to outrank our competitors.

Link building is not easy, however. It requires hard work, creativity, patience, and a lot of timel. This job becomes more challenging when you hear remarks like "This technique is not good; it will not work for your website ranking," "This is unethical," and much more. In a real sense, these are inevitable comments.

We are constantly being questioned by our clients about what works and what doesn’t work, so I thought I would compile a quick list of misleading link building statements to help our clients.

#1 Outbound links can kill rankings

“Linking out to other sites isn’t worth doing because you drive people away from your website.”

“All outbound links leak Page Rank.”

My verdict: If you send your visitors to useful content often enough, they’ll keep coming back for more.

A site cannot "drop" or "lose" PageRank by linking out. Also, there are few ways of linking to other sites that don't result in leaks. The best option is to set “rel” attribute i.e., rel="nofollow". The fact is search engines not only look how the site links in, but also check how it links out. Sites with a lot of incoming and reciprocal links can only be viewed negatively by search engines.

Tip: Link to websites that will benefit you. Linking to authoritative sources can help establish visibility and build credibility. Outbound links hold a lot more weight than is generally perceived.

#2 Reciprocal links won't work

A common myth concerning reciprocal links is that if you exchange links with sites, you will not get any value of those links in rankings.

My verdict: It’s not true that reciprocal linking is bad. If you link to a site you liked and this site also link to you (depends on site requirement), there is nothing bad about it. And it will pay you in terms of ranking for sure. Besides, the wrong way of reciprocal linking is creating a link page on a website and then trading links with other websites' link pages with the intention of “Give link and get link.”

Always remember, Google will never penalize the site that has backlinks coming from relevant and quality sites.

Tip: Stay within your domain and it should not be your only linking strategy.

#3 Link with a Page That has a High Page Rank

Get 25% links from PR-5

15 % links from PR- 4

10% links from PR- 3 and so on….

PR…PR ….PR. One of the major concerns of clients. Even service providers differentiate their services by offering the highest percentage of links from high PR sites.

My verdict: We think it’s totally misleading your prospects. We (SEO professionals) know quality and relevancy is paramount, so why do we always try to fool our customers by using statement like this?

Who says backlinks from PR 5 is better than PR 1? Look at this PR calculation formula:

The final Page Rank of your web page equals to 1-0.85 + 0.85 x (PR/ number of outbound link).

Now, for instance, you have webpage A. You are getting links from two pages: one is B and other is C.

Page B (page rank- 5, number of outbound links – 100)

Page C (page rank- 1, number of outbound links – 10)

According to the formula above, if web page A gets link from page B, the final PR will be 0.15 + 0.85 x 5/100= 0.193.

And if A gets a link from C, the final PR will be approximately 0.24.

So you see, the final PR value of Page A will be better if linking with C has PR 1 than linking with a page B that has PageRank 5.

Tip: It is advisable to check the total number of outbound links on a page and the quality of a webpage rather than PR only.

#4 Linking With High PR websites!

“Always Link with High PR page.”

Another misleading concept. There are a lot of differences between websites and web pages.

My verdict: A high PR website indicates the PR of the home page and web page can be any of the inner pages. Google assigns PR only to a particular web page and not to the whole site. Therefore, home page PR cannot pass value to the inner pages of website.

Tip: It is imperativeto check the PR of a web pageand, most importantly, the relevance of that particular page from where the link is sourced.

#5 Permanent link building

“Links can be permanent.”

This is the biggest myth that makes service providers' pitch sound compelling to most of their prospects.

My verdict: Links cannot be permanent. Getting links on other sites depends on the webmaster of that site. He can either keep it for long or remove it, all up to his or her requirement. We cannot take direct control on others' sites. However, we can take assurance from them to keep the links for a particular time period (6 months, 3 months, etc.) and not forever.

Tip: Develop links that can pay you longer, not even stay longer.

#6 Paid links are unethical

There is much conversation around paid links, like:

“Paid links are unethical; Google can penalize you for paid links.”

My verdict: What is the differentiating factor between natural links and paid links? Or how could you detect paid links? No way at all, but there could be guesses about paid links, like developing a large number of links within limited time period, with most of the backlinks from High PR sites, links from irrelevant sites, or many other quality issues. If you know these things can pull Google to suspect your sites, it’s better to avoid these types of links while buying.

Paid links are none other than paid advertisements. If you can post banner and text ads, then why not links?

Tip: For quality links, it would be better to go for experienced and authorized link builders (who know the real purpose of link development and could give your website maximum business) rather than linking networks. Don't even buy links in bulk and pay for only those links that can return you more.

Hopefully, this post will make customers' jobs easier and help them to select the best link builder. But to what extent -- it all depends on individual perception. I would not say you have to follow my verdict and tips. But I must say to our visitors that they have to be aware of these types of misleading statements and use their own mind instead of following others.

@Rebecca,
Seriously... did you publish this post just to f*** with me? Am I being Punk'd right now?
@Tripti,
Your post is a great example of misleading information. And I don't mean the individual points you mentioned--I mean the entire post, including your so-called "verdicts" and "tips."
It would take me about 2-3 hours to fully explain why virtually everything you wrote is flawed, misleading, or wrong, so instead I'll just pick one.
#3
It's not really clear what "misleading information" you're trying to argue against here. My best guess is that you're telling us not to overemphasize the importance of acquiring inbound links from high-PR pages.
Regardless of whatever it is you're trying to say, the reality is your interpretation of the PageRank formula is very... very... wrong.
d = 0.85 (damping factor derived statistically)
0.85 was not "derived." It was specifically chosen because it results in PageRank values that closely resemble the true hyperlink structure of the Web, yet it allows the PageRank calculation to converge after a reasonably small number of iterations.
The final Page Rank of your web page equals to 1-0.85 + 0.85 x (PR/ number of outbound link).
Um... no? You can't just turn this:
PR(B) / L(B) + PR(C) / L(C) + PR(D) / L(D)
into this:
PR / L
Why not? Well... for one, it doesn't follow the order of operations. In other words:
1/2 + 3/4 + 5/6
is not the same as:
(1+3+5)/(2+4+6) = 9/12 = 3/4
The only way you would be able to simplify the PageRank equation the way you did is if we are separately calculating the PageRank that C distributes to A, or that B distributes to A. If that's what you were trying to show, then you should have used clearer language and avoided using that particular PageRank equation altogether.
According to the formula above, if web page A gets link from page B, the final PR will be 0.15 + 0.85 x 5/100= 0.193.
Wow. You just plugged toolbar PageRank numbers into an equation that uses real PageRank numbers. This is perhaps the foulest of SEO party fouls.
My verdict: I'm sure you meant well, but unfortunately... the information you've posted here is dangerously inaccurate or wrong.

It's hard to have confidence in a post that has grammar and other copy issues, but more alarming is "verdicts" like this crap:

A high PR website indicates the PR of the home page and web page can be any of the inner pages. Google assigns PR only to a particular web page and not to the whole site. Therefore, home page PR cannot pass value to the inner pages of website.

HUH? "can be any of the inner pages" What does that mean? It doesn't even make sense. AND Google does assign PR to a whole site. Page ranks ARE passed from homepage to "inner" (I think you mean internal) pages.

Wow, what a startling load of misinformation - how much am I paying for SEOMoz???? Yikes.

Good post. For #1, Outbound links can kill rankings, you probably don't want outbound links on your closing pages (where you close the sale or checkout). I usually reccomend a custom header and footer on those pages with less options for the user to back out and start navigating but I do keep it easy for them to back out of the sales page.

Nice round-up of some common misconceptions regarding linking - especially by those who are not out in the field testing new stuff everyday.

I like the part about reciprocal links the best. This has always been amusing to me because if you're an authoritative website and you link to other authoritative websites in your field then in all likelihood they will link back to you praising you for your good content as well. This is a natural occurrence - so obviously some form of reciprocal linking is expected among like-minded sites.

I always try to advise clients this way: Google likes it when links are natural. If your links aren’t natural, then at least make them natural-looking.

For instance, it’s OK if you have some reciprocal links to your website – as long it doesn’t make up the majority of your inbound links (the same principle holds true for duplicate content, “bad neighborhood” links, site-wide links, etc.).

And on a related note - I’ve said this before, and I’ll likely continue to say it until someone can prove to me it isn’t true – but I think Google pays attention to the text in no-followed links.

If you have 100 followed links to a site called acmesupply.com with the anchor text of “acmesupply.com”, but you have 1000 no-followed links (from blog comments or the like) to the same page but with the anchor text of “Good Cheap Tools”, then I think you may discover that you start to rank for “Good Cheap Tools”. I’m just saying. You should try it. You might be surprised.

This is highly anecdotal, but a couple of years ago, I had a single nofollow link pointing into my widgets page with the anchor text "blue widgets", and soon found I was ranking higher in the serps for "blue widgets" than I was for "widgets" - this despite the fact that the word "blue" appeared nowhere in the page or in other inbound links.

A few possibilities here:

a) As you suggest, the nofollow link was communicating something to Google.

b) There was another link to that page containing the word "blue", but my searches couldn't find it for some reason.

c) The content with the nofollow link was being scraped and shown elsewhere, without the nofollow.

d) Despite the absence of the word "blue" elsewhere, Google happened to simultaneously decide there was something blue in the theme of my widget page.

I think he means that if you get a link from a site, the site can still take down that link any time the owner wants, so it's not technically a "permanent" link. Most links don't get removed, but there is still a small chance that a site owner could delete a link from his site to yours.

I agree; only linking to "authority sites" that will lend credibility to your own site is my tendency. And sometimes, I do not nofollow these links...it depends.

I am not in the habit of reciprocating links. If I do, it's because it's a dealbreaker if I refuse...and then I generally nofollow the link. I've found that, in many cases (I won't say MOST to avoid making generalizations and offending someone!) people who demand reciprocal links are not very SEO-savvy.

You're right; only linking to a site because it has high PR is not always the best idea. I take into account more than just PR when asking for a link on a site.

What is the differentiating factor between natural links and paid links? Or how could you detect paid links? No way at all

I disagree - it's pretty easy to spot a paid link. Even if a paid link is placed away from any language that suggests that it was paid for ("Sponsors" or "Advertisments" or "Partners," etc) it is often fairly easy to spot paid links. If you're trying to stay in Google's good graces, paying for links involves a lot of clever wording so that your paid link appears natural.

why do you no follow these links? are you pointing to crappy websites? That should be the only reason to no follow a link, if a site deserves a link then it certainly deserves the follow also in my opinion.

Thanks Rishil - yes, there are many reasons why I might nofollow a link. I've said before, though, that I do not ALWAYS nofollow outbound links - linking out to an authority site, for example, is very helpful in establishing credibility for my site.

There is a yes and no factor to this equation. We "know" that sites have been penalised fopr buying links.

Paid linking can be noticed by the trend or rate at which backlinks are accumulating, by the page titles (sponsor etc is 100% right as an indicator), code surrounding link - Text Link Ads used to acually add code around their paid links that was noticeable. Etc etc.

However, certain paid link strategies run under the radar - but I advise severe caution - these are stunts performed by experts :P

I'm struggling to find much in this article to agree with really, it seems that even your valid points are made quite poorly. It has some merit to those unfamiliar with SEO but I wouldn't give it much credit past that myself!

I'm in agreement with Google Consultant & Blogwam here. I was bought here by an unsolicited email from http://www.linkpopularitymatters.com and found this article to be generally at odds with some of my current experience. As someone else here put it, it sound like flawed opinion being passed off as authorative advice, which happens to complement what linkpopularitymatters would like you to believe.

I was on the fence until I saw the Page Rank of http://www.linkpopularitymatters.com, (2) at which point I got on with my day. Wish I could get my 45 minutes back though.

Google assigns PR only to a particular web page and not to the whole site.

true

Therefore, home page PR cannot pass value to the inner pages of website.

not true. if the page with the highest PR on your website links to inner pages, it'll pass pagerank (and it should pass by definition as you consider the pages as valuable enough to link to from your 'most important' (according to google) page)

You are right rishil, At that point I meant to say "Home page PR cannot pass direct value to the inner pages of website". As it is quite obvious that if a site has good home page PR it will have some value in the eyes of search engines but does not necessarily all pages of site have same value.

I'm with Google Consultant (above) I was brought here by a link in an unsolicited email offering me link building services (they obviously did a search on 'Web Design Companies UK' and found my old web design site).

Here's the kicker - I stopped web design per se 4 years ago. My old site is a one page AD, no pages, no links built, no SEO for 4 years! nada!

Strange then that it, like the LinkPopularity Matters site, has PR2 :-)

For your question I would like to share Google webmasters guideline that stated "Not all paid links violate our guidelines. Buying and selling links is a normal part of the economy of the web when done for advertising purposes, and not for manipulation of search results."

Hope this point would help you to understand Google's role for paid link.

Let's say for instance, one large company (with a large 50K+ website and good SEO) acquires another company within the same industry (which also has a large 50K+ website and good SEO). Since the acquisition, both sites now provide links back and fourth between one another. Would this help both websites by giving creditability to one another? Or would using nofollow in this circumstance make more sense? My only concern for not using nofollow is that Google might start discrediting both websites.. not sure.

Do not use their services linkpopularitymatters.com is a terrible. they place your site on their own spam websites and charge you for it... lucky for me I only lost 300$ and didn't pay the rest of the fee because they only provided spam websites to get links... DO NOT USE THEIR SERVICES!!! WORTE COMPANY EVER!!!

As stated by Sergey Brin and Lawrence “We assume there is a "random surfer" who is given a web page at random and keeps clicking on links, never hitting "back" but eventually gets bored and starts on another random page. The probability that the random surfer visits a page is its PageRank. And, the d damping factor is the probability at each page the "random surfer" will get bored and request another random page.

The parameter d is a damping factor which can be set between 0 and 1. We usually set d to 0.85.

Definately a helpful post. It is true that outbound linking has to be a factor that helps to determine what neighborhood your site belogs to as well as the types of links going out.

As for inbound linking, quality and theme are paramount to gaining an advantage in natural search.

And with PageRank, it's well known that public PageRank is very outdated and innacurate - rather it only works as a sort of compass in which to guage possible value. It must be coupled with theme, link volume, quality and other stats for actual results to come from efforts.

I am not a great fan of PR and therefore would not like to comment on that aspect of link building.

But I definitely agree with you on matters concerning reciprocal, outboudn and paid links.

I see no reason why search engines should discount or penalize reciprocal links. I often link out to other people in my blog posts which I find of value, and other blogger link to my posts that they find useful. Technically that would count as a reciprocal link, I see no dubious intentions here and any reason why search engines should frown upon it.